


The Princess and the Sorcerer

by Sirris_Sunless



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls I, Dark Souls III
Genre: Gen, Just characters from Heysel's view, Leonhard the ultimate asshole, No real pairings here, Speculation on Heysel's backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:09:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26705755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sirris_Sunless/pseuds/Sirris_Sunless
Summary: AKA the sad life of Yellowfinger Heysel. Heysel seeks companionship from the phantom of princess Dusk, Farron's Undead legion, asshole Leonhard, and Orbeck.Based on the idea that Heysel is related to Oolacile, and that her character is a twist on Dusk.
Relationships: Yellowfinger Heysel/Orbeck of Vinheim, Yellowfinger Heysel/Ringfinger Leonhard
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	The Princess and the Sorcerer

_*Lady of the Lake*_

Heysel saw her at a young age. She secretly named her Lady of the Lake. The princess appeared above water in a dark night, like a luminous veil blew into existence by the wind when Heysel scribbled on the lake bank with a tree branch. By then the Darkroot Garden was turning into a swamp. Moist silt caught the branch and broke it in half. Heysel stepped into the murky water, hands covered with soil, and stared at the phantom.

“Agh… thou canst see me, child. A special talent thou possess.”

She gave Heysel a proper bow, her voice sweet and airy like the wind. Heysel had never heard such a beautiful voice. She had only heard the rumbling growl of Ghrus and heavy grunts of the Legion warriors. She had never seen such a beautiful person --- her ivory neck and wrist, those docile eyes, the crown of feathers, and that pure white dress. Before meeting her, Heysel always thought they owned this garden.

“Come forward, child, dost not be afraid...”

The phantom beckoned, flickering like a candle flame. Heysel walked further into the water, and saw a different reflection on the surface: sharpened teeth, bloated head, and hair-covered arms. She studied the reflection and heard a sigh. The princess clutched her hands in a prayer, struggling between existing and fading. So the reflection belonged to Heysel herself after all, as the phantom had no reflection.

“Poor child... I am Dusk of Oolacile. I cometh from an age long before thine… I can not stay here for long… My home, Oolacile, is the home of ancient sorceries. Please, dear child, approve of me, to pass thee this profound knowledge...” 

Heysel didn’t understand why she called her “poor”. Yet still she began to wait for Dusk day and night. The legion warriors, acolytes of Farron and the Crystal Sage left to stop the Abyss, leaving for seasons without coming back. Heysel had flipped through all of her father’s books, and those of the Crystal Sage. She had harassed every crab and plucked every mushroom. After Dusk showed up and disappeared, Heysel lingered by the lake everyday, until faint moonlight climbed high.

“Child, the sorceries of Oolacile differ from the magic of thine age. It is difficult to explain… Oolacile sorceries are, what doth one say? They are somewhat… of an approximation. Thine sorceries are more straight forward, negating all but thy self. Dost thou not find some fascination in these discrepancies?”

Dusk only revealed herself at night, rambling about her magic as Heysel struggled to stay awake. She couldn’t understand half of the words, but still strived to listen. Nonetheless, awake or not, Heysel couldn’t make Dusk stay. The princess would dissipate after a few words.

“The gods manipulated light, and we use it to cast disguise.” Dusk always crossed her hands in prayer when she spoke. “Our magic is an approximation of gods’ power, just as we are of their image.”

“Can you tell a story?” Heysel yawned. God was a distant concept. Dusk would then softly recount about her ancient home and the Abyss.

“I still think on that creature from the Abyss that preyed upon me. My faculties were far from lucid, but I quite clearly sensed certain emotions… a wrenching nostalgia, a lost joy, an object of obsession, and a sincere hope to reclaim it… Could these thoughts belong to the beast from the Abyss? But if that were true, then perhaps it is no beast after all…”

_*The Undead Legion*_

All mishap happened in the twelfth year of Heysel’s life. The Undead Legion returned. Heysel sat under the second fire and pulled a face to the ascending warriors, as she always did. They laughed, as they always did, but then shunned her eyes, exchanging glances with each other. Heysel’s heart sunk, and she ran to the end of their line.

“Oh, Heysel.” The leader of the legion was always the last one in line. He bent forward so she could touch the tip of his pointed helm. Last time she needed him to squat down for that.

“I’m sorry, Heysel.” He didn’t call her “little thing”. His mask and high collar covered his face, revealing only a pair of eyes in the color of fallen leaves.

“Is - is my father dead?” 

Heysel asked, words slurring, her voice bizarre and blurred compared to his. All the legion warriors fell silent. Only the noise of fire cracking remained. The leader of the legion stared at Heysel for a second, and patted her head. 

“Forgive me, Heysel.” He apologized again, “You are a fine sorcerer by now, aren’t you?”

Heysel did not cry. She spent the night sitting next to the lake. The lady of the lake didn’t show up. A strange Ghru watched her for the whole night. Next morning, she requested to join the Undead Legion, assured that he’d let her in. She was a fine sorcerer now, according to him.

“There’s no way.” The leader of the legion declined without hesitation. “You can do whatever you like here, but you cannot join the Undead Legion.”

It was then Heysel ran out of the woods, outraged. Her father, an acolyte of Farron, died, and the leader wouldn’t let her join them. No one cared where she would go. No one would come look for her. She ran all the way past Farron and saw a white tower. Atop the tower there was a town, dilapidated, but occupied. She always thought there were only mountains beyond Farron. Lost and dumbfounded, she stood by the entrance of the town. Maybe someone from here would like to talk to her ---

“Heh heh! Wretched beast of Farron, fuck off, willya?”

A stone hit her on the forehead. Heysel wiped the dripping blood off her eyes and saw a mad woman behind the red flow. 

“Ghru - ghruuuu! Heh heh heh!” Other villagers followed suit with delirious shrieks. They mocked her with Ghru’s low growl, accompanied by more flying stones. Heysel picked up the stones and threw them back. Soon she was laying on her stomach, searching frantically for things to throw in the sand. Someone picked her up from behind and dragged her away from this settlement. Heysel kicked and screamed while deranged swearings from the villagers chased after her.

“What is it, little thing? Look at you. You’re dirtier than one of us, who spent his day rolling in the swamp. ”

The leader of Undead Legion put her down, wiping the dust and blood off her face with his thumb. Heysel ducked her head away.

“Why did they do that?” She asked. The man didn’t respond. He didn’t respond to a lot of questions, like when she asked about the tale of a princess, a wolf knight and the abyss. He didn’t even finish telling her that story.

“Am I different? Different from you - or your bunch?” She pressed. The legion warrior remained silent. He would never know that Heysel had dreamed about that tale. She dreamed that she was the princess captured by the beast. A knight in a pointed helm traveled across the dark to her rescue, and revealed his grey hair and eyes of the autumn leaves. 

“Show me your face.” At last she commanded. So the leader of the legion warriors removed his helmet and mask, and pulled down the high collar. After seeing Dusk, for the second time, Heysel fathomed the beauty of man. Warm streams flowed out of her eyes, blending with the dirt and blood.

“Stay safe, little thing.” The leader of Undead Legion patted her head again, and put the helm back to join his fellow warriors.

The warriors left again, the three fires decorating Farron quenched. The Crystal Sage said they headed to Carthus to stop the Abyss. Soon the leftover sorcerers and acolytes began to hollow, one after another. And then only the Ghrus were left, making black bug pellets that no one would ever use again. 

Princess Dusk had not shown up for a long time. Heysel’s reflection on the water grew longer day by day. Before it only reached that flower, and then it stretched to that tree. Heysel was afraid for time to pass, her forehead bloating, her hair growing. She checked her legs everyday, fearing that her knee would move up so she’d become a digitigrade. But she also wanted time to pass faster, as decades of loneliness was a suffocating vision.

When eighteen lines were carved on the tree below the second fire, a dark sign appeared on Heysel’s withered chest.

_*Ringfinger*_

Heysel woke up as water filled her lung and flushed up her nose. Rippling waves drummed in her ears, mingled with voices from a woman. Since when did this lake become so murky? Oh, no, that is my blood. She lied on the bank, a dagger in hand, and bleeding cuts on another. Goddamned. I am back again, or I didn’t even die in the first place…

“Why… my child, what hast thou done?”

Pale fingers slid across her face as a bead of pearls. The lake princess gazed at her, worried. Heysel shunned her hand and pushed herself up, leaving two deformed handprints on the slit.

“The dark sign… I’m branded with the dark sign!” Her tears were clearer than her slurring words. “The legion warriors left. Father’s dead. You are gone, too! Why did it come to this…? This forest used to be Oolacile, am I right? A place consumed by the abyss. That’s why I… all of us, turn into hollows, and monsters?”

Splashing water passed through Dusk’s body. The princess flinched and hanged her head.

“Forgive me, dear… Soon, my time shall be done...”

“Then teach me, now! Teach me to become like you!” 

Heysel’s senseless request was met with another sigh. Dusk’s eyes landed on her, as a bird finding its resting place. 

“... as you wish, then, daughter of Oolacile, child of the Abyss… I shall leave everything to thee.”

After that night, Heysel never saw Dusk again. She followed Dusk’s instruction and found a cave deep in Farron Keep. Inside the cave there were two chests, carrying the Golden Scroll and a pure white dress. In front of the chests, Heysel fixed her pick with golden specks. She hung a string of medallions on her coat, and wrapped some weathered clothes into a crown. She made sure to cover every inch of her skin, especially her deformed left hand, and shut the chests tight.

She’d not wear that beautiful dress, as she was a sorcerer, a golden sorcerer in a ridiculous crown. Such a curious pursuit was surely nothing to be ashamed of.

Heysel left Farron Keep once again. A Ghru followed her, sending her off with rumbling growls. This time she went on a different route. The crown was working, since no hollows threw her stones. She entered a small chapel without hindrance. As soon as she lowered her pick, she heard an intruder, one who didn't care enough to mask his steps.

Heysel turned back, unnerved. The first thing she saw was a silver mask, its contour slick and eyeholes deep and dark, its jawline curved like an elegant smile. Below the mask was a dingy garb, with golden threads more intricate than thousands of leaves overlapped. He held a shotel in his hand, a soft arc in freezing color. 

If Dusk was ghostly moonlight, his shotel was the sharp metal Moon. Heysel sensed her crown overwhelmingly heavy, and her pick weighing itself down. Just like the intruder, revealing not a single inch of skin, Heysel felt herself so ugly, and the ugly must be defeated. As expected, the intruder easily knocked her pick away. She was falling down. Like a nobleman embracing his date, he used the shotel to catch her waist. The piercing crescent cuddled Heysel, cutting deep into her lower back, her blood joyfully gushed down the blade to the red carpet. 

She seized his cape, trying to escape from the biting blade. He let her clutch to him, and used his left hand to unwrap her crown. Heysel struggled more violently, but his body blocked her, trapping her between him and the sword. He even nodded slightly, deepening the smile on the silver mask, his velvety voice smiling as well:

“Hush, now… all I want is just your tongue.”

One layer of her crown removed, Heysel saw the cloth hanging before her eyes. No, never. She gathered all remaining strength to push him away, and thud down on the floor. She lay there, attempting to pull the shotel out of her back, but of course she lacked the strength. So she slit the cloths wrapping her left hand with the blade, and raised up the deformed claw in a surrender. 

“You won’t want my tongue.” She mumbled, crying, her other hand grasping the shotel. She waited for disdain, or even death. However, after a short silence, the man’s boots came close to her body as she heard his voice falling onto her.

“...Ahh, how unexpected, you are also a rotten thing.”

Gently, he turned her to her side, and pulled the Crescent Moon Sword out of her lapping flesh. Heysel saw a red eye orb bounced lazily towards her face, as the man invited,

“If you grow weary of your filthy form, you, too, may become a Finger. Come on, give yourself to Rosaria, of the Cathedral of the Deep.”

Starting that day, Heysel became one of Rosaria's fingers and began to invade. She prepared a beautiful dagger just for collecting tongues. _I am Yellowfinger, one of many. The mother of rebirth needs my service._ She was in such ecstasy when she cut those tongues, that she cut in the rhythm of her nursery rhymes. She visited Rosaria frequently, and had seen a few other fingers. Leonhard was always there, leaning against her bedchamber’s wall with his arms crossed.

Heysel was afraid of this man, yet he pulled her eyes like a piece of magnet. She forgot how long time had passed. After another offering of tongues, Heysel was met by Leonhard before the exit.

“Ah-hah, another tongue... Brilliant. I knew you were no ordinary woman.” His words erupted in her chest like a firebomb. “If you seek rebirth, then go ahead, pray to our goddess.” 

Leonhard guided Heysel through her first rebirth. He pressed her down in a kneeling position, his gloved hand glided over her dirty crown to cover her eyes. He whispered to the wordless Rosaria in her stead, his cold silver mask pressed against her side, burning her earlobe. Heysel indulged in the dreamlike darkness, imagining Dusk’s fair skin and delicate braid. Bountiful blessing flushed every piece of her bones from her fingertips and squirmed under her skin, filling her emaciated form. She felt her flesh bobbed in elation as it grew into beauty.

Long after the rebirth, Heysel still missed that lingering shiver. When she finally stood up, Leonhard was ready to leave. Heysel heard her voice fly out of her tongue before she could stop it.

“Wait!”

Her new voice was sweet and young, like a flower in the Darkroot Woods. Leonhard paused his steps. Heysel unwrapped her crown layer by layer, never lifted her eyes from him. The Ringfinger stood there, unmoved, speechless under the silver mask. But Heysel did not mind, as the sweet aftertaste of rebirth still lolled at the tip of her tongue.

“... I want to see your face, Leonhard.” she gazed at him eagerly, extremely affected by everything, “I don’t care how bad the burn is.”

She waited, for the contour of the silver mask to become a smile, for the black eyeholes to lit up. Ringfinger Leonhard stared at her for a moment, and then burst into laughter, his laugh cold like moonlight. He laughed so hard, and Heysel felt her newborn face become stiff. 

“Oh… oh my goddess, how very pathetic...”

Leonhard stepped up to her, blocking her like a shield of night. Heysel stuck out her stiffened chin, waiting for him to hold it, or at least. to embrace her like a lover with his Crescent Moon Sword.

But he didn’t even touch her.

“Be warned, Yellowfinger, Rosaria's Fingers need only fetch tongues for her. Otherwise we are free, unchained. You can choose to believe there’s shared camaraderie. But…...”

He leaned in and whispered to her behind his mask, insidious amusement harboured in that velvety voice.

“... But do not force your romance upon me.”

_*The Sorcerer*_

Heysel returned to Farron Keep, guarding the fires of Undead Legion day and night. During her time in the Cathedral of the Deep, she learned the legion warriors were Lords of Cinder who left their throne. After their departure to Carthus, perhaps they’d never return. She also learned that Rosaria’s fingers were after embers and tongues, instead of camaraderie. 

Regardless, Heysel still wrote down her summon sign everyday near Farron Keep. In the long hazy period of time, she was summoned only twice, and she properly bowed to each beckoner. The first cooperator was a bumbling knight. He kept walking up to her, trying to see her face. The other beckoner sent her back before she straightened up from the bow. When she couldn’t cooperate, she invaded other worlds, patrolling around the cave of the Golden Scroll and the white dress.

After Farron Keep turned into a swamp, Heysel expanded her patrol route to Crucifixion Woods. The waters here had not been contaminated. One day, Heysel heard the bonfire crack when she was watching a crab creeping forward. She grabbed her pick and looked up to the bonfire on the hill.

“Is this the Farron Keep?” The stranger asked. Unlike the Legion warrior and Leonhard, the man had to clench his throat for a deep, pensive voice. Heysel backed up and saw him atop the hill. A sorcerer, in an elegant coat almost as antiquated as Dusk’s white dress, a gem ornamenting his neckerchief.

Heysel nodded hastily. A stranger was indeed a surprise. She backed up even more and he asked again,

“Then, the sorcerer by the end of this woods… is that the Crystal Sage?”

Heysel wasn’t sure how to reply. The Crystal Sage had lost the ability to talk long ago, clinging to his tainted soulmasses and slaughtering every moving thing with a soul that passed by, except for herself, child of his former acolyte. Yet she couldn’t really lie, so eventually she nodded.

“Oh… what a fool I was, thinking I could really make any kind of discovery...”

The glow in the sorcerer’s eyes faded, his graceful frame almost collapsed for a moment, only to be held up by his remaining grit, and he said,

“...Wait, that headwear of yours… Could you be a Xanthous scholar? I mean no harm, you see. I am only here to seek knowledge.” 

His tired eyes fell on Heysel, as he forced a dim glow in them and a faint smile by his colorless lips. What a beautiful face that was --- curled black locks framed his pale cheekbones, the ridge of his nose slender like that of a mountain. His long, dark eyebrows weighed down on those blue eyes, as the glitters inside struggled to break free of their constraint. From the sorcerer’s eyes, Heysel saw her crown, malformed and filthy, decorated by white mold and bloodstains from her prey. 

She took even more steps backward, not making a sound, or knowing how to respond. In return to the sorcerer’s temporal kindness, she chose to run.

This outsider settled down in Crucifixion Woods. With the most powerful sage in Lothric guarding the exit, no seeker of magic would ever choose to slay the Crystal Sage and leave. Thus the young sorcerer had nowhere to go. He was trapped here, with his hopeless studies.

On the day he moved into the ruins, Heysel was an urn, watching him take down the hollows with pestilent mist. One day he briefly dabbled into Farron's swamp, and immediately returned to clear waters to wash his pretty coat. Heysel disguised herself as a wooden cross in the water, counting the water droplets on his chest. His study grew bigger, and the scrolls piled up against the wall. She watched him read and write, cast spells, and watched him turn the cross for crucifixion into a chair. Whenever he left the study for supplies, Heysel would sneak in to go through his books. She learned his name, Orbeck of Vinheim, and his exquisite handwriting……

 _I am a sorcerer too, you know._ Heysel curled in the cave in Farron Keep. A polished copper plate lay next to her. _I have invented sorceries praised even by the Crystal Sage_ . She pulled off the crown and shoved her face in the mirror. _I even know golden sorcery from the ancient land. I am Yellowfinger Heysel, daughter of the Farron Acolyte, a Xanthous scholar of Oolacile._ Her face was painted yellow by the crown, her forehead bloating, her nails sprouting without control, her torso perishing like that of the dead. _If you want, I can share those with you, all of it..._

Heysel finally made up her mind and offered Rosaria another tongue, recalling Dusk’s face during the rebirth. With her cape carefully picked up in her hands, she went around the silt and came in front of the sorcerer’s study. _Well then, from now on, I shall call you master._ She paid no mind to that new voice. All she heard was the sorcerer’s hearty laughter, so warm and deep that it melted the stone wall before her.

“Very well, Unkindled one, I shall teach you sorceries. We will learn together, it shall be like our very own school...”

Then she saw Orbeck of Vinheim crushed a bone fragment in his hand, and disappeared from this place. A remaining knight examined the study curiously. _Huh, who are you?_ The knight turned to the stranger who just burst in, their voice under the helm jovial, yet unfamiliar. Heysel glared at this outsider, as if to look through that shabby helm. Two streams of deep green pattern flowed down its eyeholes. They were mocking her, like two streams of tears --- 

Could these thoughts belong to the beast from the Abyss? The Xanthous scholar Heysel finally understood such beast. A wrenching nostalgia, a lost joy, an object of obsession, and a sincere hope to reclaim it… Promptly, she raised her pick, and darted towards the knight…

_*Heysel*_

"Oh, my… This is stupendous. It's from Oolacile, an ancient land of golden sorceries. Not even the Dragon School possesses such a long-lost scroll. What would the Xanthous Scholars say, with their ridiculous headwear? They would simply slaver over this find… Hah hah hah..."

\---FIN?---


End file.
